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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in the city in June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly issued messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $1m in aid for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and past players. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {